Mexico

benjaminfernandezb@hotmail.com

Project Goal: For the first time, the country will have a civic organization dedicated to supporting freedom of expression and the right of journalists to freely pursue their craft. This new group will provide journalists with the skills to effectively use the access-to-information law as well as master their legal rights in a society where the media are harassed with impunity.

Partner Organization: Centro de Defensa Legal de la Libertad de Expresion (CEDELI). The Center for the Legal Defense of Free Expression will be Mexico’s first civil organization established to defend free expression and address the climate of fear and danger in which journalists operate.

Biography: Benjamin Fernandez has a PhD in law and social science from the Universidad Nacional in Asuncion, Paraguay. He also has a Masters Degree in Communications and Law from the University of Minnesota, where he had a Fulbright fellowship. Fernandez currently is director of Radio Libre, media consultant on governance and communication law, and a visiting scholar at Harvard University. He was a Neiman Fellow and a Humphrey Fellow at the University of Syracuse (New York). In addition to being a lawyer, he is a journalist who has worked as a columnist for Ultima Hora and Le Monde Diplomatique (Mexican edition), and news manager for the Sistema Nacional de Television – Channel 9. Fernandez also was a member of the National Constitutional Congress of Paraguay and founder of the Union of Journalists of Paraguay. He is fluent in English, Guarani, Portuguese, and Spanish.